The Leiden school is a school of thought in

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

that models languages as

meme A meme ( ) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural i ...

s or benign neurological parasites,http://www.semioticon.com/virtuals/imitation/van_driem_paper.pdf and tries to use rigorous mathematical tools borrowed by analogy from biological evolution to model the origin and spread of language in general and specific languages in particular. It is based at the

University of Leiden Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city of Le ...

, and its chief proponents are

George van Driem George "Sjors" van Driem (born 1957) is a Dutch linguist associated with the University of Bern, where he is the chair of Historical Linguistics and directs the Linguistics Institute. Education * Leiden University, 1983–1987 (PhD, ''A Grammar ...

Frederik Kortlandt Frederik Herman Henri (Frits) Kortlandt (born 19 June 1946) is a Dutch former professor of descriptive and comparative linguistics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He writes on Baltic and Slavic languages, the Indo-European languages in gen ...

, and

Jeroen Wiedenhof Jeroen Maarten Wiedenhof (born 1959 in 's-Hertogenbosch) is a senior lecturer at the Department of Chinese Studies at the University of Leiden, and an expert on Chinese linguistics, particularly Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of ...

. The Leiden School has a significant overlap in personnel with the

Himalayan Languages Project The Himalayan Languages Project, launched in 1993, is a research collective based at Leiden University and comprising much of the world's authoritative research on the lesser-known and endangered languages of the Himalayas, in Nepal, China, Bhutan, ...

. The Leiden school of linguistics should not be confused with the current research institute of linguistics at Leiden University, the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) or the methodology employed in the

Indo-European Etymological Dictionary The ''Indo-European Etymological Dictionary'' (commonly abbreviated ''IEED'') is a research project of the Department of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics at Leiden University, initiated in 1991 by Peter Schrijver and others. It is financially ...

currently worked on at this institute.

References

Schools of linguistics Leiden University {{Ling-stub

See also

References